Music was an important part of life in ancient China. It was the the most popular form of entertainment, and for some men and especially women it was their profession. In Nineteen Old Poems (Gushi Shijiu Shou, 古诗十九首), a selection of anonymous poetry from Eastern Han Dynasty (25~220 BCE), one of the most common topics is music and singers. There are descriptions of singing and dancing, of the emotions stirred by music and banquet, of the experience of listening to a performer. Chinese musical aesthetic tradition hails the combination of those who where able to produce sorrow through their performances and the “knowing listeners” (zhiyin, 知音)– those in whom this sorrow arose. It is the shedding of tears that is valued, not just the music one hears.
A Tall Tower in the Northwest
In northwest there is a tower proud;
It stands as high as floating cloud.
Its curtained lattice window flares
Between the eaves and flights of stairs.
Music from there comes to my ear,
Its sound so sad,its tune so drear.
Who could compose such doleful song
But one whose secret grief’s life-long?
Sad music rises with the breeze;
The middle tune wafts ill at ease.
It’s followed the by three refrains;
At last indignant,it complains.
For the musician out of view,
I sigh that connoisseurs are few.
I would become a crane to sing
With her while flying wing to wing.
It is more than two years since I last saw father, and what I can never forget is the sight of his back. Misfortunes never come singly. In the winter of more than two years ago, grandma died and father lost his job. I left Beijing for Xuzhou to join father in hastening home to attend grandma’s funeral. When I met father in Xuzhou, the sight of the disorderly mess in his courtyard and the thought of grandma started tears trickling down my cheeks. Father said, “Now that things’ve come to such a pass, it’s no use crying. Fortunately, Heaven always leaves one a way out.”
After arriving home in Yangzhou, father paid off debts by selling or pawning things. He also borrowed money to meet the funeral expenses. Between grandma’s funeral and father’s unemployment, our family was then in reduced circumstances. After the funeral was over, father was to go to Nanjing to look for a job and I was to return to Beijing to study, so we started out together.
I spent the first day in Nanjing strolling about with some friends at their invitation, and was ferrying across the Yangtse River to Pukou the next morning and thence taking a train for Beijing on the afternoon of the same day. Father said he was too busy to go and see me off at the railway station, but would ask a hotel waiter that he knew to accompany me there instead. He urged the waiter again and again to take good care of me, but still did not quite trust him. He hesitated for quite a while about what to do. As a matter of fact, nothing would matter at all because I was then twenty and had already traveled on the Beijing-Pukou Railway a couple of times. After some wavering, he finally decided that he himself would accompany me to the station. I repeatedly tried to talk him out of it, but he only said, “Never mind! It won’t do to trust guys like those hotel boys!”
We entered the railway station after crossing the River. While I was at the booking office buying a ticket, father saw to my luggage. There was quite a bit of luggage and he had to bargain with the porter over the fee. I was then such a smart aleck that I frowned upon the way father was haggling and on the verge of chipping in a few words when the bargain was finally clinched. Getting on the train with me, he picked me a seat close to the carriage door. I spread on the seat the brownish fur lined overcoat he had got tailor made for me. He told me to be watchful on the way and be careful not to catch cold at night. He also asked the train attendants to take good care of me. I sniggered at father for being so impractical, for it was utterly useless to entrust me to those attendants, who cared for nothing but money. Besides, it was certainly no problem for a person of my age to look after himself. Oh, when I come to think of it, I can see how smarty I was in those days!
I said, “Dad, you might leave now.” But he looked out of the window and said, “I’m going to buy you some tangerines. You just stay here. Don’ t move around.” I caught sight of several vendors waiting for customers outside the railings beyond a platform. But to reach that platform would require crossing the railway track and doing some climbing up and down. That would be a strenuous job for father, who was fat. I wanted to do all that myself, but he stopped me, so I could do nothing but let him go. I watched him hobble towards the railway track in his black skullcap, black cloth mandarin jacket and dark blue cotton-padded cloth long gown. He had little trouble climbing down the railway track, but it was a lot more difficult for him to climb up that platform after crossing the railway track. His hands held onto the upper part of the platform, his legs huddled up and his corpulent body tipped slightly towards the left, obviously making an enormous exertion. While I was watching him from behind, tears gushed from my eyes. I quickly wiped them away lest he or others should catch me crying. The next moment when I looked out of the window again, father was already on the way back, holding bright red tangerines in both hands. In crossing the railway track, he first put the tangerines on the ground, climbed down slowly and then picked them up again. When he came near the train, I hurried out to help him by the hand. After boarding the train with me, he laid all the tangerines on my overcoat, and patting the dirt off his clothes, he looked somewhat relieved and said after a while, “I must be going now. Don’t forget to write me from Beijing” I gazed after his back retreating out of the carriage. After a few steps, he looked back at me and said, “Go back to your seat. Don’t leave your things alone.” I, however, did not go back to my seat until his figure was lost among crowds of people hurrying to and fro and no longer visible. My eyes were again wet with tears.
In recent years, both father and I have been living an unsettled life, and the circumstances of our family going from bad to worse. Father left home to seek a livelihood when young and did achieve quite a few things all on his own. To think that he should now be so downcast in old age! The discouraging state of affairs filled him with an uncontrollable feeling of deep sorrow, and his pent-up emotion had to find a vent. That is why even mere domestic trivialities would often make him angry, and meanwhile he became less and less nice with me. However, the separation of the last two years has made him more forgiving towards me. He keeps thinking about me and my son. After I arrived in Beijing, he wrote me a letter, in which he says, “I’m all right except for a severe pain in my arm. I even have trouble using chopsticks or writing brushes. Perhaps it won’t be long now before I depart this life. “Through the glistening tears which these words had brought to my eyes I again saw the back of father’s corpulent form in the dark blue cotton-padded cloth long gown and the black cloth mandarin jacket. Oh, how I long to see him again!
Beginning in Tang Dynasty (618~907), new music from Central Asia began entering China and soon became all the rage at the cosmopolitan Tang court and in Tang urban culture. From the lyrics set to this so-called banquet music (言乐, yanyue), there arose a new poetic genre, the ci (词), “song lyric”. The ci poems were written into hundreds of tune patterns, each of which strictly determined by the number of characters per line, the placement of rhymes, and the position of tones. Originally the ci were actually sung to these tunes, but eventually the tunes themselves were lost, and all that remained were the hundreds of ci patterns (词牌 cipai) with their many variations. To this day, one speaks of “filling in the words” to a song lyric (填词, tian ci) according to the matrix associated with its tune title.
This genre developed into a major alternative to traditional shi (诗) poetry during the Song Dynasty, when it is traditionally thought to have reached its height. In the famous ci poem “The Beautiful Lady Yu”, Southern Song Dynasty (1127~1279) poet Jiang Jie (c.1245~1310) tells his life story. The poem, which is commonly known as “Listening to the Rain” (听雨 Ting Yu), poignantly and powerfully calls attention to the different emotions at stages of the poet’s life, set against the sameness of nature. While nature seems to eternally repeat itself in a predictable way, human life can never really repeat itself in a predictable way. Human life can never really repeat itself without noticeable change, not even in such a seemingly innocuous act as listening to the rain. In fact, it is precisely the sameness of nature and the seeming sameness of the poet’s habit of listening to the rain that trigger his deepest pathos about the vicissitudes of life.
English translation by Xu Yuanchong
The Beautiful Lady Yu
Jiang Jie
While young, I listened to the rain in house of song.
Beside a candle red,
In silken-curtained bed.
In prime of life I heard the rain on river long
Beneath the cloud where wailed wiled wild geese
In western breeze.
Now that I listen to the rain in temple’s cell,
My hair bespeckled well.
Men meet and part with joy and sorrow.
Let raindrops drip until the morrow!
English translation by Joseph Needham
The Beautiful Lady Yu
Jiang Jie
As a young man, listening to the girls in the tower,
I heard the sound of the rain,
While the red candle burned dim in the damp air.
In middle age, traveling by boat on a river,
I listened to the rain falling, falling:
The river was wide and clouds drifted above;
I heard the solitary cry of a teal borne on the west wind.
And now in a cloister cell I hear the rain again,
My hair is grey and sparse;
Sadness, and happiness, separation and reunion, all seem one,
They move me no more.
Let the rain drop all night on the deserted pavement
Till the day dawns.
Original text in Simplified Chinese
虞美人
蒋捷
少年听雨歌楼上，红烛昏罗帐。壮年听雨客舟中，江阔云低，断雁叫西风。
而今听雨僧庐下，鬓已星星也。悲欢离合总无情，一任阶前，点滴到天明。
sources:
Xu Yuanchong. (2007). Three hundred Ci of the Song Dynasty. China Translation and Publishing Company.
Cecile Chu-chin Sun. (2011). The Poetics of Repetition in English and Chinese Lyric Poetry. University of Chicago Press.
Zong-qi Cai. (2013). How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology. Columbia University Press.
Chinese literary critics have honored Du Fu (712~770) as the “Poet Historian” since Northern Song Dynasty (960~1127). The most directly historical of Du Fu’s poems are those commenting on military tactics or the successes and failures of the government, or the poems of advice which he wrote to the authorities. Indirectly, he wrote about the effect of the times in which he lived on himself, and on the ordinary Chinese people. “Song of the Conscripts” (兵车行 Bingche Xing, literally “Ballad of the Army Wagons”) was written in around 750, when China under Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty (685~762) frequently engaged in wars with neighboring countries on its western border. It gives voice to the sufferings of conscript soldiers in the imperial army and criticizes China’s military expansionism.
“Song of the Conscripts” sets the scene around Chinese capital Chang’an (today’s Xi’an) with a long column of conscripts heading north to the Wei River Bridge and off to the frontier. A bystander elicits a monologue from one of the conscripts, who complains of the length of service, deserted farmland, and the anticipation of a futile death on the battlefield. A Tang paper fragment with a few lines of this poem has been found in the sands of Central Asia, testifying that the poem actually traveled with where the troops did.
English translation by Xu Yuanchong
Song of the Conscripts
Du Fu
Chariots rumble
and horses grumble.
The conscripts march with bow and arrows at the waist.
Their fathers, mothers, wives and children come in haste
To see them off; the bridge is shrouded in dust they’ve raised.
They clutch at their coats, stamp the feet and bar the way;
Their grief cries loud and strikes the cloud straight, straightaway.
An onlooker by roadside asks an enrollee.
“The conscription is frequent,” only answers he.
Some went north at fifteen to guard the rivershore,
And were sent west to till the land at forty.
The elder bound their young heads when they went away;
Just home, they’re sent to the frontier though their hair’s gray.
The field on borderland becomes a sea of blood;
The emperor’s greed for land is still at high flood.
Have you not heard
Two hundred districts east of the Hua Mountains lie,
Where briers and brambles grow in villages far and nigh?
Although stout women can wield the plough and the hoe,
Thorns and weeds in the east as in the west o’ergrow.
The enemy are used to hard and stubborn fight;
Our men are driven just like dogs or fowls in flight.
“You are kind to ask me.
To complain I’m not free.
In winter of this year
Conscription goes on here.
The magistrates for taxes press.
How can we pay them in distress?
If we had know sons bring no joy,
We would have preferred girl to boy.
A daughter can be wed to a neighbor, alas!
A son can only be buried under the grass!”
Have you not seen On borders green
Bleached bones since olden days unburied on the plain?
The old ghosts weep and cry, while the new ghosts complain;
The air is loud with screech and scream in gloomy rain.
source
Kang-i Sun Chang, Stephen Owen, The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, 2010, Cambridge University Press.
Xu Yuanchong, 300 Tang poems : a new translation, 1987, Commercial Press
The story of Tang Ju is recorded in Zhanguo Ce (战国策, “Strategy of the Warring States” ), a fictionalized work of history first circulated during the Latter Han Dynasty of China (25~220 CE ). Unlike military strategy manuals that center on Sun Tzu-style martial tacticians, Zhanguo Ce highlights the group known as moushi (谋士, “strategist-persuader”) and their skills as politicians, rhetors and diplomats during the Warring States period (475~221 BCE).
Tang Ju was such a moushi serving Anling, a minor protectorate of the State of Wei. In 225 BCE, King Zhao of Qin (324~251 BCE) conquered Wei, posing an immediate threat to Anling. To save his endangered lord, Tang Ju went to meet furious King Zhao and successfully settled the dispute by wisdom and courage.
English translation by B.S. Bonsall
Tang Ju Succeeded in His Mission
The King of Qin sent a messenger to speak to the Prince of Anling and say: “I wish to exchange five hundred li of territory for Anling. I hope the Prince of Anling will agree to my request!” The Prince of Anling said:”Your Majesty adds to your graciousness. I received the territory from the former King. I wish to guard it to the end. I dare not make the exchange!”
The King of Qin was displeased. So the Prince of Anling sent Tang Ju on a mission to Qin. The King of Qin spoke to Tang Ju and said: “I was giving five hundred li of territory in exchange for Anling. The Prince of Anling would not listen to me. Why was that? Moreover Qin has destroyed Han and wiped out Wei. And because His Highness has been left with fifty li of territory he considers himself to be superior. Therefore he pays no attention. Now I ask permission to extend his lands with territory ten times as large, and yet His Highness resists me. He is despising me.” Tang Ju replied: “No. It is not so. The Prince of Anling received the territory from the former King and keeps guard over it. He would not dare to exchange it for a thousand li. How would he for only five hundred?”
The King of Qin was annoyed and angry. He spoke to Tang Ju and said: “And has your Lordship heard of the wrath of the Son of Heaven?” Tang Ju replied: “Your servant has not heard.” The King of Qin said: “The wrath of the Son of Heaven lays low a million corpses and makes blood to flow for a thousand li.” Tang Ju said: “Has Your Majesty heard of the wrath of a commoner?” The King of Qin said: “The wrath of commoner makes himself take off his hat, walk barefoot, and knock the ground with his head!” Tang Ju said: “This is the wrath of a mediocre person, not the wrath of a gentleman. When Zhuan Zhu assassinated King Liao a comet covered the moon. When Nie Zheng assassinated Han Gui a white rainbow pierced through the sun. When Yao Li assassinated Qing Ji black falcons fought above the palace. All these three gentlemen were commoners. While they were cherishing their wrath and before it had come forth, portents descended from the Heaven. And your servant will make a fourth! If a gentleman must be wrath, the corpses of two men will lie low and their blood flow five paces. This is the day for the world to put on mourning.” He drew his sword and arose.
The King of Qin with confused countenance knelt as length and excused himself, saying: “Be seated sir. Why come to this? I understand. That after Han and Wei have been annihilated Anling survives with only fifty li of territory is solely because of you!”
Wrote during the Ming-Qing transition, Chinese poet Wu Weiye (1609~1671) was classified under the category of “officials who served two dynasties” (贰臣, erchen). He held office under the Qing from 1654 to 1656 and later regretted it. Wu’s post-1644 writings are stuffed with lamentation for the fall of the Ming Dynasty, nostalgia for the world before its collapse, and, after his journey north to take office late in 1653, regret and anguish over his own irresolution and compromises. Most people have accepted Wu’s version of events — that he unwillingly took office under pressure from his family and the Qing authorities.
Honored as a “poet-historian” (诗史, shishi), Wu Weiye often chose to write longer ancient-style poems and ballads, forms that lend themselves to elaboration of descriptive and narrative detail, unfolding arguments, and shifting perspectives. In his famous “Song of Yuanyuan” (圆圆曲, Yuanyuan Qu), he put individual’s perspective against historical upheavals. According to various miscellanies and historical sources, the courtesan Chen Yuanyuan (1624~1681) was taken captive when Beijing fell to the rebels in 1644. Outraged at this turn of events, her lover Wu Sangui (1612~1678), military commander of the strategic Shanhai Pass, the eastern terminus of the Great Wall, joined forces with the Manchus and marched upon Beijing to facilitate the Manchu conquest. Wu did not make “Song of Yuanyuan” a warning against moral decadence and sensual indulgence, but remains sympathetic to Yuanyuan, who in the poem comes to stand for the helplessness and confusion of individual caught in cataclysmic turmoil.
English translation by Huang Zhangwei
Song of Yuanyuan
Wu Weiye
No sooner His Majesty committed suicide
Quit the world of horror
The General defeated the enemy in mountain-pass battles
Recaptures the capital in terms of honor
Soldiers were coached to cry for the emperor’s death
In their white mourning rags and sign
The General was so angry that his hair uplifted his hat
Simply for a beautiful concubine
Ostensibly the wanton woman may not be his only beloved
The rebel’s defeat mainly due to looting corruption
Swiftly striking them down by blitzkrieg
Expected a reunion
Always remember when he met her
At Mr. Tien’s house—the first sight scene
The singing and dancing of aristocratic entertainment
Topped by her flowered beauty to the extreme
The host allowed the General to pick her up
In a concubine marriage
And the royal relative’s geisha girl
Waiting for his ornamented wedding carriage
Who was such a girl?
She was born and raised
In a Soozhou’s romantic neighborhood in peace
Nicknamed Yuan Yuan
As pretty as fabulous silk masterpiece
Ever dreamed of getting inside an ancient royal garden
So happily milling around with roaming pace
Then ushered and fanned by palace girls
All the way to the King’s place
Probably she’s destined to be a countryside lotus-picking girl
And to be chosen later for a king
No wonder in front of where she lives
Provides such surrounding ponds like a ring
She was virtually kidnapped away in a boat
By a rich and strong man, can’t be defying
The departing twin oars
Splashing the river like flying
How unfortunate she was
In her youngster years
At that time the Beauty can do nothing
But bursting into tears
In a palace, to so many pretty girls
With bright teeth, sparkling eyes, who cared to pay attention
One of the royal relatives
Managed to have her released from palace administration
Then totally shut in a noble family’s confine
She was taught to sing new songs and learning her new line
The purpose was to please the guest
Until the guest drank to tipsy sunset and rest
Into all ears
The enchanting music rings
Who knows her melancholy
Fiddled among the strings
The noble General was young and smart
Making choices amidst pretty girls’ noise
Simply he can free any bird from a cage
By an order of his voice
As fairy goes, the once-a-year reunion
Of the Cowboy and Weaver-Girl on separate side of Milkway
Can be realized now to cross the bridge made by magpies
In any day of a year, at any time of a day
But pushed by urgent military orders
The General was reluctantly gone
Left behind a reunion promise
That subsequently made everything wrong
That reunion promise, so lovely and so hard to deliver
What a pity
Until suddenly one day
The rebels were all over the city
When viewing from upstairs
Willows beside her house excitedly changed a lot
In watchful eyes of a woman
It’s a sea of bewildered catkins on the spot
Sealing up her house
The search of the Beauty was going on
Shouting the best dancer’s name
Out! out of the luxurious building to come on down
Eventually were it not the victory
Of the General’s army to get her back
How could she be returned safely
On a single horseback
The messengers repeated the calling all along
“She is coming!”
Still shocked by her disastrous journey
Her unruly hair yet to be combing
Right there on battlefield
She was welcomed by candlelights and spears
She cannot help crying joyfully
Mingled her rouge with tears
Beating the drums, blowing the bugles
The General’s army marching toward the west
Along the road of Golden Cow
Thousands of war chariots progressed chest to chest
Sporadically she put herself up
In a valley-side guest house
Even the waning moon above the mountain-pass
Mirrored the Beauty with applause
As the news spread back to her native land
Time really flies as you see
Already counted it’s the tenth year frost
Standing there the old red tree
The geisha teacher—alive and well
Was still kicking around
The silk-cleaning girls remembered their companion
Knowing now she was safe and sound
Just like those busy swallows
In the same muddy nest, in the same days of old
Now the Beauty flew to the top
Becoming a phoenix in gold
Holding a wine-cup, some one usually felt sad
Thinking about old age
And someone’s husband
Titled the Prince on national stage
During those years
She was very much disturbed by her fame
But noble lords and leaders’ desire on her
Remained the same
As the Beauty says:
“Buy me off with a bushel of pearls
That brought up thousands of bushels’ unhappy elements
As it whirls”
“That made me wantoning
Over countless mountains and rivers in a haste
Ended up with, as evidenced by
My skinny and fragile waist”
Don’t blame stormy wind blowing the withering flowers
Looks like the destiny is unsound
As time goes by
The springtime and fortune will come around
Supposed the prettiest woman in history
Might destroy a nation or a city
Undoubtedly the General’s fame
Came up and down with the Beauty
Should a spouse have anything to do
With the existence of a nation
Irresistibly the General was tightly bound
By love and desire in combination
Members of the General’s family were all killed
Dead body’s bones became ashes and ashes it laid
Merely left the Beauty’s big name in history
O’ What a price the General has paid
Don’t you see
The ancient king’s place of love
Where the twin ducks swim happily to and fro
The beautiful girls of Yue country
Just like countless flowers as many generations grow
Now the once fragrant garden path
Is dusty and weedy
Only the birds are still chirping:
“What a pity!”
The once most fantastic palace corridor of Wu Dynasty
Which can produce musical sound with each stepping on
Except the silent courtyard moss is evergreen
Everything else together with the Beauty is all gone
Within a scope of ten thousand miles
The stage moved to the old southwest
Changing things like shifting musical tones
Whether comedy or tragedy, history will judge best
Comparing the songs singing in palace of Wu Dynasty
Ceaseless inspirations and rhymes reaching a new height
Just like the Han River
Flows to southeast day and night
Wen Tianxiang（1236 –1283) was a prominent scholar, military leader, and poet in the late years of the Southern Song Dynasty. Having passed the imperial examination as the top scorer at a young age, he gradually rose up the ranks and served as the Prime Minister. Wen positively organizing the Chinese resistance against Mongol invasion and was captured. He was tortured for years and ultimately executed, never wavering in his loyalties.
Crossing the Lonely Ocean was written in early 1279 when Wen was being escorted from Guangdong to Beijing to meet Kublai Khan, the new ruler of China. The Lonely Ocean (伶仃洋/零丁洋, Lingding Yang) is also known as Lintin Sea. A part of South China Sea, it locates in the south of the Zhongshan County, Guangdong Province. The Frightful Shallows (惶恐滩, Huangkong Tan) is one of the eighteen dangerous shallows in the Gan River of Jiangxi Province. The Mongols entered Jiangxi in 1275 and defeated Wen’s army there in 1277.
Crossing the Lonely Ocean Wen Tianxiang
Through painstaking mastery of one
Of the Classics, I have risen high;
But four years of raging war have well-nigh
Brought all-round destitution and ruin.
My shattered country does remind
Me of willow-catkins swept by wind;
My life’s vicissitudes attain
The aspect of duckweeds beaten by rain.
At the Frightful Shallows we fought our way,
They’d tell the frightful battle never won,
And on the Lonely Ocean I could but sigh
For being captured, and all alone.
Down through the ages, whoever that lived
Has not in death ended his life?
I wish to leave but a loyal heart
Shining red in History’s archive.
source: Wang Zhihuan,Selected Lyrics on Themes of Patriotism and Moral Integrity： from Ancient to Modern Chinese Classic Poetry, 1995, China Translation & Publishing Corporation.
Maj. Gen. Charles W. Sweeney (1919~2004) and the Japanese version of his memoir “WAR’S END:An Eyewitness Account of America’s Last Atomic Mission”
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee. I am Major General Charles W. Sweeney, United States Air Force, retired. I am the only pilot to have flown on both atomic missions. I flew the instrument plane on the Hiroshima mission, and 3 days later on August 9, 1945 commanded the second atomic mission over Nagasaki. Six days after Nagasaki the Japanese military surrendered and the Second World War came to an end.
Fifty years ago millions of my fellow citizens served our country in a time of national crisis — a crisis which engulfed our panel; a crisis in which the forces of fascism were poised to extinguish the democracies of the world. It was a crisis in which the forces of evil were clearly defined, or at least I thought so until last fall when I read the first accounts from the Air Force Association of the proposed script for the exhibit of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Institution.
It was obvious to me that the Enola Gay was being used to advance a theory about atomic missions and the United States’ role in World War II that transformed the Japanese into victims and cast the United States as a vengeful aggressor engaged in a war to destroy an ancient culture. My first reaction was, as you can imagine, personal disbelief. I just could not believe that the Smithsonian, an institution whose very name signifies honesty and integrity in the preservation of American artifacts, could be so wrong.
Like the overwhelming majority of my generation I did not want a war. We are not a Nation of warriors. There is no warrior class, no master race, no Samurai. Yet during the years when my generation and our parents were struggling through the Great Depression, the Japanese were engaged in the conquest of their neighbors. That is an unfortunate fact of history. Without the slightest remorse or hesitation the Japanese military slaughtered innocent men, women, and children. In the end, they would kill over 20 million of their Asian neighbors.
The sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, timed for Sunday morning to inflict the maximum loss of ships and human life, thrust the United States into a war in the Pacific whose outcome then was far from certain. Seventeen hundred sailors are still entombed in the hull of the U.S.S. Arizona that sits on the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Many, if not all, died without ever knowing why.
The fall of Corregidor and the resulting treatment of Allied prisoners of war dispelled any remaining doubt about the inhumaneness of the Japanese army even in the context of war. The Japanese military considered surrender a dishonor to one’s self, one’s family, one’s country, and one’s God, and thus they showed no mercy.
This was the true nature of the enemy we faced. This was the reality which President Harry Truman confronted as he considered sending yet even more American soldiers, sailors, and airmen into the horror of the war in the Pacific. Declassified transcripts of the secret codes which we had broken during the war and were available to President Truman and his military advisors underscore the Japanese attitude 50 years ago. The transcripts show the Japanese had no intention of surrendering unconditionally. They were stalling for time and fully prepared to continue to sacrifice their own citizens. And as time passed more Americans died.
The Japanese military was fully prepared to fight on, even after the Hiroshima mission. In fact, even after the Nagasaki mission, some Japanese military leaders were still advocating fighting on.
We know that in a pre-invasion meeting at the White House on June 18, 1945 Admiral William Leahy predicted to President Truman, based on the experience of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, 30 to 35 percent of the 770,000-man invasion force would be killed or wounded in the first 30 days of an invasion of the Japanese mainland. That calculates out to about a quarter of a million American men. President Truman remarked that the invasion would create another Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other; one of the most horrendous battles we ever fought. Now it would be expanded the whole length of Kyushu, the southern island of the four main islands of Japan.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed. General MacArthur’s chief surgeon. Brigadier General Guy Dennett, estimated that in the 120-day campaign to invade and occupy only the island of Kyushu, 395,000 casualties would be sustained. For President Truman, for me and for my crew, the probability of so many casualties was not an abstraction but a sobering reality.
The world is a better place because German and Japanese fascism failed to conquer. Japan and Germany are better places because we were benevolent in our victory. The youth of Japan and the United States, spared from further needless slaughter, went on to live and have families and grow old. Today millions of people in America and Japan are alive because we ended the war when we did. This is not to celebrate the use of atomic weapons. Quite the contrary. It is my fervent hope that my mission is the last such mission ever flown. But that does not mean that back in 1945, given the events of the war and the recalcitrance of our enemy. President Truman was not obliged to use all the weapons at his disposal to end the war.
Now, 50 years later after their defeat, some Japanese officials claim they were the victims, ignoring the clear evidence of their own brutality and mind set. Incredibly, how can any American academic support such a proposition, thus aiding and giving support to a 50-year attempt by the Japanese to rewrite their own history and ours in the process. Such an effort to rewrite history does a disservice to both countries. There is an entire generation of Japanese who do not know the full extent of their country’s conduct during World War II.
By forgetting our own history we contribute to Japanese amnesia, to the detriment of both nations. Unlike the Germans who acknowledge their guilt, the Japanese persist in the fiction that they did nothing wrong. That they were the victims of circumstances. This only forecloses any genuine prospect that the deep wounds suffered by both nations can be healed. We must know and remember history.
I have always had the utmost respect for the Smithsonian Institution and its mission. I do not understand how it could have planned to so unfairly mistreat the United States’ role in
World War II, to denigrate the bravery of our American soldiers, sailors, and airmen and the courage of President Truman. By canceling the proposed exhibit and simply displaying the Enola Gay, has the truth won out? Maybe not. Maybe this exhibit reveals a deeper problem.
Imagine taking your children or grandchildren to the original proposed exhibit. Would they learn of the sacrifices their fathers and grandfathers endured in that war in the Pacific so that all of us could be free in 1995, free to visit the Smithsonian or anywhere else we choose? Would they understand the important historical context which led the President of the United States to make the decision to end that brutal conflict using all the weapons at his disposal? I think not.
In the end, what would our children and grandchildren think that their country stood for? In trying to understand the reason why the Smithsonian did this I certainly do not get any clue from the stated reason the director gave for canceling the proposed exhibit. As I recall, he said the Smithsonian realized that it had been too ambitious by combining a highly emotional commemorative event for veterans with an historical analysis. This reason is at best condescending to the veterans. I suggest that the forces behind the revisionism of our history at the Smithsonian were flat out wrong in their analysis, and they should have said so.
The soul of a nation, its essence, is its history. It is that collective memory which defines what each generation thinks and believes about itself and its country. For this reason the facts must always be preserved. This does not mean debate should be stifled. It does mean that any debate must be founded upon a recognition of all the facts. At the Smithsonian there was an absence of some rather basic facts and a conclusion which was unsupported by those basic facts.
My fellow veterans and I were impelled to ask how could the Smithsonian have been so terribly wrong about the true nature and meaning of the war in the Pacific and the atomic missions? Fortunately, this threat to our national identity was aired out in the open because the proposed exhibit of the Enola Gay was so devoid of factual support. Other historic events may be too subtle to be seen as clearly. Certainly the country was fortunate that millions of veterans of the war, and citizens of the United States who are not necessarily veterans, were still alive to report on what really happened. I might point to one specific class of Americans, and they are the ones whose husbands, sons, loved ones were poised to conduct, to participate in that invasion.
So I come before this committee to ask you as Members of Congress to do all in your power to protect and preserve the integrity of the process by which our national identity is formed and debated. Our history is a precious asset. In a free society such as ours there must always be an ongoing debate about who we are and what we stand for.
The key question, however, is what role is appropriate for the Smithsonian in this ongoing debate and what process is to be employed in making decisions about historic interpretation at the Smithsonian? Of course, this assumes that the Smithsonian should expand its role beyond the preservation and exhibition of significant American artifacts — American artifacts.
The fact that you are holding these hearings is an encouraging sign for many Americans that such an inquiry will prevent future attempts to revise, rewrite, or slant our historical record in any way by any Government-supported agency. I would like to ask this committee to help the American people understand how the decisions as to what history the Smithsonian will display are made. Are these decisions based on ideology or some agenda, or are they the product of careful review and presentation of historical facts?
The issue is not that a group of pesky, aging veterans raised questions about a proposed exhibit. The issue is one of trust. Can the American people trust the Smithsonian ever again to be objective and unencumbered by ideology? This is an important debate and I thank this committee for holding these hearings.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of General Sweeney follows:]
Statement OF Major General Charles W. Sweeney, USAF (Ret.)
I am Maj. Gen. Charles W. Sweeney, United States Air Force, Retired. I am the only pilot to have flown on both atomic missions. I flew the instrument plane on the right wing of General Paul Tibbets on the Hiroshima mission and 3 days later, on August 9, 1945, commanded the second atomic mission over Nagasaki. Six days after Nagasaki the Japanese military surrendered and the Second World War came to an end.
The soul of a nation, its essence, is its history. It is that collective memory which defines what each generation thinks and believes about itself and its country.
In a free society, such as ours, there is always an ongoing debate about who we are and what we stand for. This open debate is in fact essential to our freedom. But to have such a debate we as a society must have the courage to consider all of the facts available to us. We must have the courage to stand up and demand that before any conclusions are reached, those facts which are beyond question are accepted as part of the debate.
As the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions approaches, now is an appropriate time to consider the reasons for Harry Truman’s order that these missions be flown. We may disagree on the conclusion, but let us at least be honest enough to agree on basic facts of the time, the facts that President Truman had to consider in making a difficult and momentous decision.
As the only pilot to have flown both missions, and having commanded the Nagasaki mission, I bring to this debate my own eyewitness account of the times. I underscore what I believe are irrefutable facts, with full knowledge that some opinion makers may cavalierly dismiss them because they are so obvious — be- cause they interfere with their preconceived version of the truth, and the meaning which they strive to impose on the missions.
This evening, I want to offer my thoughts, observations, and conclusions as someone who lived this history, and who believes that President Truman’s decision was not only justified by the circumstances of his time, but was a moral imperative that precluded any other option.
Like the overwhelming majority of my generation the last thing I wanted was a war. We as a nation are not warriors. We are not hell-bent on glory. There is no warrior class — no Samurai — no master race.
This is true today, and it was true 50 years ago.
While our country was struggling through the great depression, the Japanese were embarking on the conquest of its neighbors — the Greater East Asia Co-Pros-perity Sphere. It seems fascism always seeks some innocuous slogan to cover the most hideous plans.
This Co-Prosperity was achieved by waging total and merciless war against China and Manchuria. The Japanese, as a nation, saw itself as destined to rule Asia and thereby possess its natural resources and open lands. Without the slightest remorse or hesitation, the Japanese Army slaughtered innocent men, women and children. In the infamous Rape of Nanking up to 300,000 unarmed civilians were butchered. These were criminal acts.
THESE ARE FACTS.
In order to fulfill its divine destiny in Asia, Japan determined that the only real impediment to this goal was the United States. It launched a carefully conceived sneak attack on our Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. Timed for a Sunday morning it was intended to deal a death blow to the fleet by inflicting the maximum loss of ships and human life.
1,700 sailors are still entombed in the hull of the U.S.S. Arizona that sits on the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Many if not all, died without ever knowing why. Thus was the war thrust upon us.
The fall of Corregidor and the resulting treatment of Allied prisoners of war dispelled any remaining doubt about the inhumaneness of the Japanese Army, even in the context of war. The Bataan Death March was horror in its fullest dimension. The Japanese considered surrender to be dishonorable to oneself, one’s family, one’s country and one’s god. They showed no mercy. Seven thou- sand American and Filipino POW’s were beaten, shot, bayonetted or left to die of disease or exhaustion.
THESE ARE FACTS.
As the United States made its slow, arduous, and costly march across the vast expanse of the Pacific, the Japanese proved to be a ruthless and intractable killing machine. No matter how futile, no matter how hopeless the odds, no matter how certain the outcome, the Japanese fought to the death. And to achieve a greater glory, they strove to kill as many Americans as possible.
The closer the United States came to the Japanese mainland, the more fanatical their actions became.
Saipan — 3,100 Americans killed, 1,500 in the first few hours of the invasion
Iwo Jima — 6,700 Americans killed, 25,000 wounded
Okinawa — 12,500 Americans killed, total casualties, 35,000
These are facts reported by simple white grave markers.
Kamikazes. The literal translation is DIVINE WIND. To willingly dive a plane loaded with bombs into an American ship was a glorious transformation to godliness — there was no higher honor on heaven or earth. The suicidal assaults of the Kamikazes took 5,000 American Navy men to their deaths.
The Japanese vowed that, with the first American to step foot on the mainland, they would execute every Allied prisoner. In preparation they forced the POW’s to dig their own graves in the event of mass executions. Even after their surrender, they executed some American POW’s.
THESE ARE FACTS.
The Potsdam Declaration had called for unconditional surrender of the Japanese Armed Forces. The Japanese termed it ridiculous and not worthy of consideration. We know from our intercepts of their coded messages, that they wanted to stall for time to force a negotiated surrender on terms acceptable to them.
For months prior to August 6, American aircraft began dropping fire bombs upon the Japanese mainland. The wind created by the firestorm from the bombs incinerated whole cities. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese died. Still the Japanese military vowed never to surrender. They were prepared to sacrifice their own people to achieve their visions of glory and honor — no matter how many more people died.
They refused to evacuate civilians even though our pilots dropped leaflets warning of the possible bombings. In one 3-day period, 34 square miles of Tokyo, Nagoya, Kobe and Osaka were reduced to rubble.
THESE ARE FACTS.
And even after the bombing of Hiroshima, Tojo, his successor Suzuki, and the military clique in control believed the United States had but one bomb, and that Japan could go on. They had 3 days to surrender after August 6, but they did not surrender. The debate in their cabinet at times became violent.
Only after the Nagasaki drop did the Emperor finally demand surrender.
And even then, the military argued they could and should fight on. A group of Army officers staged a coup and tried to seize and destroy the Emperor’s recorded message to his people announcing the surrender.
THESE ARE FACTS.
These facts help illuminate the nature of the enemy we faced. They help put into context the process by which Truman considered the options available to him. And they help to add meaning to why the missions were necessary.
President Truman understood these facts as did every service man and woman.
Casualties were not some abstraction, but a sobering reality.
Did the atomic missions end the war? Yes . . . they . . . did.
Were they necessary? Well that’s where the rub comes.
With the fog of 50 years drifting over the memory of our country, to some, the
Japanese are now the victims. America was the insatiable, vindictive aggressor seeking revenge and conquest. Our use of these weapons was the unjustified and immoral starting point for the nuclear age with all of its horrors. Of course, to support such distortion, one must conveniently ignore the real facts or fabricate new realities to fit the theories. It is no less egregious than those who today deny the Holocaust occurred.
How could this have happened?
The answer may lie in examining some recent events.
The current debate about why President Truman ordered these missions, in some cases, has devolved to a numbers game. The Smithsonian in its proposed exhibit of the Enola Gay revealed the creeping revisionism which seems the rage in certain historical circles.
That exhibit wanted to memorialize the fiction that the Japanese were the victims — we the evil aggressor. Imagine taking your children and grandchildren to this exhibit.
What message would they have left with?
What truth would they retain?
What would they think their country stood for?
And all of this would have occurred in an American institution whose very name and charter are supposed to stand for the impartial preservation of significant American artifacts.
By cancelling the proposed exhibit and simply displaying the Enola Gay, has truth won out?
Maybe not.
In one nationally televised discussion, I heard a so-called prominent historian argue that the bombs were not necessary. That President Truman was intent on intimidating the Russians. That the Japanese were ready to surrender.
The Japanese were ready to surrender? Based on what?
Some point to statements by General Eisenhower years after the war that Japan was about to fall. Well, based on that same outlook Eisenhower seriously under- estimated Germany’s will to fight on and concluded in December, 1944 that Germany no longer had the capability to wage offensive war.
That was a tragic miscalculation. The result was the Battle of the Bulge, which resulted in tens of thousands of needless Allied casualties and potentially allowed Germany to prolong the war and force negotiations.
Thus the assessment that Japan was vanquished may have the benefit of hindsight rather than foresight.
It is certainly fair to conclude that the Japanese could have been reasonably expected to be even more fanatical than the Germans based on the history of the war in the Pacific.
And, finally, a present-day theory making the rounds espouses that even if an invasion had taken place, our casualties would not have been a million, as many believed, but realistically only 46,000 dead.
ONLY 46,000!
Can you imagine the callousness of this line of argument? ONLY 46,000 — as if this were some insignificant number of American lives.
Perhaps these so-called historians want to sell books.
Perhaps they really believe it. Or perhaps it reflects some self-loathing occasioned by the fact that we won the war.
Whatever the reason, the argument is flawed. It dissects and recalculates events ideologically, grasping at selective straws.
Let me admit right here, today, that I don’t know how many more Americans would have died in an invasion— AND NEITHER DOES ANYONE ELSE!
What I do know is that based on the Japanese conduct during the war, it is fair and reasonable to assume that an invasion of the mainland would have been a prolonged and bloody affair. Based on what we know — not what someone surmises — the Japanese were not about to unconditionally surrender.
In taking Iwo Jima, a tiny 8 square mile lump of rock in the ocean, 6,700 marines died — total casualties over 30,000.
But even assuming that those who now KNOW our casualties would have been
ONLY 46.000 I ask
Which 46,000 were to die?
Whose father?
Whose brother?
Whose husband?
And, yes, I am focusing on American lives.
The Japanese had their fate in their own hands, we did not. Hundreds of thousands of American troops anxiously waited at staging areas in the Pacific dreading the coming invasion, their fate resting on what the Japanese would do next. The Japanese could have ended it at any time. They chose to wait.
And while the Japanese stalled, an average of 900 more Americans were killed or wounded each day the war continued.
I’ve heard another line of argument that we should have accepted a negotiated peace with the Japanese on terms they would have found acceptable. I have never heard anyone suggest that we should have negotiated a peace with Nazi Germany. Such an idea is so outrageous, that no rational human being would utter the words. To negotiate with such evil fascism was to allow it even in defeat a measure of legitimacy. This is not just some empty philosophical principal of the time — it was essential that these forces of evil be clearly and irrevocably defeated — their demise unequivocal. Their leadership had forfeited any expectation of diplomatic niceties. How is it, then, that the history of the war in the Pacific can be so soon forgotten?
The reason may lie in the advancing erosion of our history, of our collective memory.
Fifty years after their defeat, Japanese officials have the temerity to claim they were the victims. That Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the equivalent of the
Holocaust.
And, believe it or not, there are actually some American academics who sup- port this analogy, thus aiding and giving comfort to a 50-year attempt by the Japanese to rewrite their own history, and ours in the process.
There is an entire generation of Japanese who do not know the full extent of their country’s conduct during World war II.
This explains why they do not comprehend why they must apologize —
for the Korean comfort women,
for the Medical experimentation on POW’s which match the horror of those conducted by the Nazi’s,
for the plans to use biological weapons against the United States by infecting civilian populations on the West Coast,
for the methodical slaughter of civilians,
and for much more.
In a perverse inversion, by forgetting our own history, we contribute to the
Japanese amnesia, to the detriment of both our nations.
Unlike the Germans who acknowledged their guilt, the Japanese persist in the fiction that they did nothing wrong, that they were trapped by circumstances. This only forecloses any genuine prospect that the deep wounds suffered by both nations can be closed and healed.
One can only forgive by remembering. And to forget, is to risk repeating history.
The Japanese in a well-orchestrated political and public relations campaign have now proposed that the use of the term “V-J Day” be replaced by the more benign “Victory in the Pacific Day”. How convenient.
This they claim will make the commemoration of the end of the war in the
Pacific less “Japan specific.”
An op-ed piece written by Dorothy Rabinowitz appearing in the April 5 Wall
Street Journal accurately sums up this outrage:
The reason it appears, is that some Japanese find the reference disturbing — and one can see why. The term, especially the “J” part, does serve to remind the world of the identity of the nation whose defeat millions celebrated in August 1945. In further deference to Japanese sensitivities, a U.S. official (who wisely chose to remain unidentified) also announced, with reference to the planned ceremonies, that “our whole effort in this thing is to commemorate an event, not celebrate a victory.”
Some might argue so what’s in a word — Victory over Japan, Victory in the Pacific — Let’s celebrate an event, not a victory.
I say everything is in a word. Celebrate an EVENT!
Kind of like celebrating the opening of a shopping mall rather than the end of a war that engulfed the entire Earth — which left countless millions dead and countless millions more physically or mentally wounded and countless more millions displaced.
This assault on the use of language is Orwellian and is the tool by which history and memory are blurred. Words can be just as destructive as any weapon.
Up is Down.
Slavery is Freedom.
Aggression is Peace.
In some ways this assault on our language and history by the elimination of accurate and descriptive words is far more insidious than the actual aggression carried out by the Japanese 50 years ago. At least then the threat was clear, the enemy well defined.
Today the Japanese justify their conduct by artfully playing the race card. They were not engaged in a criminal enterprise of aggression. No, Japan was simply liberating the oppressed masses of Asia from WHITE Imperialism.
Liberation!!! Yes, they liberated over 20 million innocent Asians by killing them. I’m sure those 20 million, their families and the generations never to be, appreciate the noble effort of the Japanese.
I am often asked was the bomb dropped for vengeance, as was suggested by one draft of the Smithsonian exhibit. That we sought to destroy an ancient and honorable culture.
Here are some more inconvenient facts.
One, on the original target list for the atomic missions Kyoto was included.
Although this would have been a legitimate target, one that had not been bombed previously. Secretary of State Henry Stimson removed it from the list because it was the ancient capital of Japan and was also the religious center of Japanese culture.
Two, we were under strict orders during the war that under no circumstances were we to ever bomb the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, even though we could have easily leveled it and possibly killed the Emperor. So much for vengeance.
I often wonder if Japan would have shown such restraint if they had the opportunity to bomb the White House. I think not.
At this point let me dispel one of many longstanding myths that our targets were intended to be civilian populations. Each target for the missions had significant military importance — Hiroshima was the headquarters for the southern command responsible for the defense of Honshu in the event of an invasion and it garrisoned seasoned troops who would mount the initial defense.
Nagasaki was an industrial center with the two large Mitsubishi armaments factories. In both Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Japanese had integrated these industries and troops right in the heart of each city.
As in any war our goal was, as it should be, to win. The stakes were too high to equivocate.
I am often asked if I ever think of the Japanese who died at Hiroshima and
Nagasaki?
I do not revel in the idea that so many on both sides died, not only at those two places but around the world in that horrible conflict. I take no pride or pleasure in the brutality of war whether suffered by my people or those of another nation.
Every life is precious.
But it does seem to me such a question is more appropriately directed to the
Japanese war lords who so willingly offered up their people to achieve their visions of greatness. They who started the war and then stubbornly refused to stop it must be called to account. Don’t they have the ultimate responsibility for all the deaths of their countrymen?
Perhaps if the Japanese came to grips with their past and their true part in the war they would hold those Japanese military leaders accountable. The Japanese people deserve an answer from those that brought such misery to the nations of the Far East and ultimately to their own people. Of course this can never happen if we collaborate with the Japanese in wiping away the truth.
How can Japan ever reconcile with itself and the United States if they do not demand and accept the truth?
My crew and I flew these missions with the belief that they would bring the war to an end. There was no sense of joy. There was a sense of duty and commitment that we wanted to get back to our families and loved ones.
Today millions of people in America and in Southeast Asia are alive because the war ended when it did.
I do not stand here celebrating the use of nuclear weapons. Quite the contrary.
I hope that my mission is the last such mission ever flown.
We as a nation can abhor the existence of nuclear weapons.
I certainly do.
But that does not then mean that, back in August of 1945, given the events of the war and the recalcitrance of our enemy. President Truman was not obliged to use all the weapons at his disposal to end the war.
I agreed with Harry Truman then, and I still do today.
Years after the war Truman was asked if he had any second thoughts. He said emphatically, “No.” He then asked the questioner to remember the men who died at Pearl Harbor who did not have the benefit of second thoughts.
In war the stakes are high. As Robert E. Lee said, “it is good that war is so horrible, or we might grow to like it.”
I thank God that it was we who had this weapon and not the Japanese or the
Germans. The science was there. Eventually someone would have developed this weapon. Science can never be denied. It finds a way to self-fulfillment.
The question of whether it was wise to develop such a weapon would have eventually been overcome by the fact that it could be done. The Soviets would have certainly proceeded to develop their own bomb. Let us not forget that Joseph Stalin was no less evil than Tojo or his former ally Adolf Hitler. At last count, Stalin committed genocide on at least 20 million of his own citizens.
The world is a better place because German and Japanese fascism failed to conquer the world.
Japan and Germany are better places because we were benevolent in our victory.
The youth of Japan and the United States, spared from further needless slaughter, went on to live and have families and grow old.
As the father of ten children and the grandfather of 21, I can state that I am certainly grateful that the war ended when it did.
I do not speak for all veterans of that war. But I believe that my sense of pride in having served my country in that great conflict is shared by all veterans. This is why the truth about that war must be preserved. We veterans are not shrinking violets. Our sensibilities will not be shattered in intelligent and controversial debate. We can handle ourselves.
But we will not, we cannot allow armchair second guessers to frame the debate by hiding facts from the American public and the world.
I have great faith in the good sense and fairness of the American people to consider all of the facts and make an informed judgment about the war’s end.
This is an important debate. The soul of our nation, its essence, its history, is at stake.
source: United States Senate Committee On Rules And Administration, “The Smithsonian Institution management guidelines for the future : hearings before the Committee on Rules and Administration, United States Senate, One Hundred Fourth Congress, First Session May 11 and 18, 1995”. Internet Archive http://www.archive.org/stream/smithsonianinsti00unit/smithsonianinsti00unit_djvu.txt
Despite the chaotic and exhausting war, the game of Go had continued in Japan in a reduced form. In May 1945, the building of Japanese Go Association (Nihon Ki-in) was burned down to the ground along with the rest of Tokyo during the Allies’ air raid. The Honinbo tournament, the oldest and the only existing tournament was therefore rescheduled in Hiroshima.
The 3rd Honinbo Tournament was held between the owner of Honinbo title, Hashimoto Utaro, and the challenger, Iwamoto Kaoru. The game 1 had been played from July 23 to 25 in the downtown Hiroshima. But the game 2 was moved to the suburb area after the match place being machine-gunned by American aircraft.
The atomic bomb was dropped at 8:15 on August 6, the third day of game 2. The game site was about 3 miles from ground zero. The shockwaves from the explosion struck the building, shattered the windows, and overturned the board. Hashimoto was blown out of the room but received only minor injuries. Though terrified, the players cleaned up the room, picked up stones, relaid the board position, and continued the game. The game was played to a conclusion at noon, with Hashimoto holding white winning by five points. This tied the match 1-1.
The war was over when the match was resumed. Despite the critical shortage of food, Hashimoto and Iwamoto played four games in consecutive days from Novemeber 11 to 24, ending in a 3-3 draw. A three-game playoff was held in August 1946. Iwamoto won two straight games and successfully claimed the Honinbo title. Tortured by poor health, Segoe Senkaku, the referee of the Atomic Bomb Game, committed suicide in 1972 at the age of 83. However, Hashimoto lived to 87 and even more impressively, Iwamoto made it to 97.
The war of twenty months’ duration is now a thing of the past, and our United Squadron, having completed its function, is to be herewith dispersed. But our duties as naval men are not at all lightened for that reason. To preserve in perpetuity the fruits of this war; to promote to an ever greater height of prosperity the fortunes of the country, the navy, which, irrespective of peace or war, has to stand between the Empire and shock from abroad, must always maintain its strength at sea and must be prepared to meet emergency.
This strength does not consist solely in ships and armament; it consist also in immaterial ability to utilize such agents. When we understand that one gun which scores a hundred per cent. of hits is a match for a hundred of the enemy’s guns each of which scores only one per cent. it becomes evident that we sailors must have recourse before everything to the strength which is over and above externals. The triumphs recently won by our Navy are largely to be attributed to the habitual training which enable us to garner the fruits of the fighting.
If then we infer the future from the past, we recognize that though war may ceases we can not abandon ourselves to ease and rest. A soldier’s whole life is one continuous and unseasing battle, and there is no reason why his responsibilities should vary with the state of the times. In days of crisis he has to display his strength; in days of peace to accumulate it, thus perpetually and uniquely discharging his duties to the full. It was no light task that during the past year and a half we fought with wind and waves, encountered heat and cold, and kept the sea while frequently engaging a stubborn enemy in a death or life struggle; yet, when we reflect, this is seen to have been only one in a long series of general maneuvers, wherein we had the happiness to make some discoveries; happiness which throws into comparative insignificance the hardships of war.
If men calling themselves sailors grasp at the pleasure of peace, they will learn the lesson that however fine in appearance their engines of war, these, like a house built on the sand, will fall at the first approach of the storm. From the day when in ancient times we conquered Korea, that country remained for over 400 years under our control, to be lost immediately as soon as our navy declined. Again when under the sway of the Tokugawa in modern days our armaments were neglected, the coming of a few American ships threw us into distress, and we were unable to offer any resistance to attempts against the Kuriles and Saghalien.
On the other hand, if we turn to the annals of the Occident, we see that at the beginning of the 19th century the British Navy which won the battles of the Nile and of Trafalgar, not only made England as secure as a great mountain but also by thenceforth carefully maintaining its strength and keeping it on a level with the world’s progress, has throughout the long interval between that era and the present day safe-guarded the country’s interests and promoted its fortunes.
For such lessons, whether ancient or modern, Occidental or Oriental, though to some extent they are the outcome of political happenings, must be regarded as in the main the natural result of whether the soldier remembers war in the day of peace. We naval men who have survived the war must take these examples deeply to heart, and adding to the training which we have already received our actual experiences in the war, must plan future developments and seek not to fall behind the progress of the time.
If, keeping the instructions of our Sovereign ever graven on our hearts, we serve earnestly and diligently, and putting forth our full strength, await what the hour may bring forth, we shall then have discharged our great duty of perpetually guarding our country. Heaven gives the crown of victory to those only who by habitual preparation win without fighting, and at the same time forthwith deprives of that crown those who, content with one success, give themselves up to the ease of peace. The ancients well said:
“Tighten your helmet strings in the hour of victory.”
East Asia: History & Literature 